PHOTOGRAPHY FROM AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND
Lecture presented by Alison Holland at Koln International Photo Fair, Cologne, Germany - April 2002
Today I’m presenting to you an overview of photography from Australia and New Zealand, showing photojournalism, portraits and urban landscapes.
JOHN WILLIAM LINDT
All the work today is by contemporary photographers, with the one exception of the photographer John William Lindt, who was born in Germany in 1845 and died in Australia in 1926, after migrating there in 1962 when he was seventeen. Lindt settled just north of Sydney amongst a white community of two and a half thousand white settlers, which included a colony of Germans.
Lindt began work in a photographic portrait studio that was run by one of the German community leaders. He was acclaimed by his fellow photographers, as the outstanding photographer of the 1880s.In 1873 he took these portraits of Australian Aboriginals, after attempting to record Aboriginal life in natural settings.
This was unsuccessful, and he finally brought them into his studio, in order to create aesthetically pleasing images, that detailed information about their indigenous way of life.To create these portraits from an anthropological perspective, Lindt took great care in portraying his subjects from childhood, maturity and old age, and clearly tried to show Aborigines as they lived before European contact.
Retrospectively however, we can see the signs of the cultural change that resulted from the confrontation with white civilization.Lindt concentrated on detailing skin textures and intricate scarification, and captured compelling expressions that are often depicted purely in their eyes. Even though Lindt was attempting to accurately document Aboriginal life with immediacy and realism, in hindsight it’s evident that his efforts to construct a story were often his own interpretation of the native life.
In 1879 Lindt submitted several albumen paper prints to the Australian Registrar of Copyright, who stamped them to enter into their official log. In 1999 with the permission on the Australian Government, copies were made from this series, and one of Sydney’s master printers was commissioned to create the limited edition Silver gelatin prints.
He was appointed a councilor of the Royal Geographic Society in 1893, and was exhibited at every available inter-colonial and international exhibition of his time.
It is interesting to note that in the late 1980s the J Paul Getty Museum curator, Weston Naef, selected Lindt as one of his personal ten favorite photographers. His photographers however were credited to the Australian School of Photography, as Mr Naef did not know the photographer by name.
Between 1876 and 1894, Lindt played an important part in the development of photography in Australia. This also indicated the fact that the evolution of the photographic medium, was surprisingly little affected by distance of the Australian colonies from the photographic centers in Europe and America.
MELISSA MCCORD
Next I have Melissa McCord. This image is from her best-selling book ‘Outback Women’. In 1986 at age 21, Melissa traveled alone more than 50,000 kilometres across some the most remote areas of Australia to gather the oral histories and photograph the women who she found living there.
These next two portraits are from her second book "A Field of Short Poppies". Melissa did this trip when she was amazingly eight months pregnant. She took this photograph at Uluru, formerly known as Ayres Rock, where she met Dickie. Earlier that day he had mysteriously told Melissa that he knew her unborn baby was sitting upside down and said he could turn it around for her.
Taking her to a remote area at Uluru, he performed a private ceremony on her and four days later the baby turned up the right way.Melissa was raised on extremely remote cattle property in Queensland and is intrigued by the paradox of isolation and the characters that dwell in relative anonymity within the harsh environment of the Australian outback.
She documents her figures in the landscape to bring to life the human spirit in an environment of stark beauty and defiance of the hardship of their surroundings.
STEPHANIE FLACK
This is work by Stephanie Flack who also photographed a community in Northern Queensland. In 1999 she traveled to Palm Island to document the indigenous community there. This community dates back to the early 1900s, when Aboriginals from all over the state of Queensland, were moved into settlements as part of the government's efforts to segregate them from white society.
Due to its isolation, Palm Island became an ideal setting for the removal of people seen as troublemakers, and those accused of criminal offences and acts of indiscipline.
Palm Island was transformed from being a beautiful and spiritual land of the traditional Aboriginals owners, to a government mission or settlement.The Palm Island Aborigines suffer many of the social problems that are inherent in indigenous communities throughout the world, including a high rate of unemployment, drug & alcohol abuse and domestic violence.
Stephanie says that there was a great deal of skepticism, from a small part of the white medical community on Palm Island, because of the way that the media had negatively portrayed this community in the past. Rather than sensationalising the difficulties found in this community, Stephanie instead chose to look beyond these issues to portray them with dignity and respect.
JOHN OGDEN
This next photographer is John Ogden, whose book titled ‘Australienation’ draws on three decades of photographic work in Australia.He has also chosen to highlight his personal attitude towards political and controversial issues. His photographs are traditional, purist and documentary in approach.
In the era of reconciliation between the indigenous community and descendants of over 200 years of white settlement, John began this series at the time of discussions on indigenous land rights.
His series is carried through to the present time, where a large majority of Australian citizens have started the process of reconciliation, through movements such as the National Sorry Day.
Unfortunately this movement is not joined by our current Prime Minister John Howard, who has the inability to say sorry and to share in these efforts.John had documented aboriginal children in the Northern Territory and the troubled indigenous community in inner city Sydney and local prisons. This was an Aboriginal area in inner city Sydney, that has since been pulled down in order to beautify the city for the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
John has also focussed on the ancestors of white settlement, subcultures, suburbia, the army, the old and the eccentric. Everyday life rather than grand events inspires his work.
The Australian landscape, people in that landscape, and the experience of the Aboriginal people are familiar in our art, writing and photography.
John tackles them with a provocative combination of directness, humanitarianism and humour. He has given us versions of Australia that reflect his own personal and artistic preoccupations.
MATTHEW SLEETH
This photographer is Matthew Sleeth. For four months in 1999 and 2000, Mathew Sleeth documented the war in Australia’s neighbouring country East Timor. This series is titled Tour of Duty, and is a commentary created to say very little about East Timor but a great deal about Australia. Matthew chose to concentrate on the way the West responds to a crisis in a developing country.
The Australian Army had taken a leadership role in the UN Peacekeeping Force, and their mission to free this country.
This action was taken after the world watched horrified as militia gangs controlled and equipped by the Indonesian government, rampaged through the small nation, killing, raping and destroying its capital, Dili.
In response the Australian government, army and UN all desperate to turn the exercise into a huge PR opportunity, arrived in full force.
Matthew also documented a disciplined East Timorese resistance movement, who after 25 years of fighting the Indonesians, triumphed in the most abject of conditions, along with support of the Australian armed forces, plus their entourage of the media, the politicians and the pop stars.Rather than quietly focussing on correcting a situation that historically the Australian government and the UN had contributed to, they seemed more interested in treating the Timorese as extras in a commercial movie of the week. The Timorese were also not allowed to attend the army’s entertainment concert performances, and at Christmas they had a Santa Claus distribute teddy bears that they had no use for.
Matthew was witnessing the fact that no-one thought to ask the Timorese how they could best be helped. Australia had come to the rescue with Kylie Minogue and stuffed toys.
PATRIOT GAMES
These 3 images are also by Matthew Sleeth from his series titled "Patriot Games". They were taken at the Sydney 2000 Olympics not long after Matthew had returned from the war in East Timor.
He says that ‘due to the lack of a decent war I was forced to use the Olympics as a way to look at Nationalism. Given the parallels in presentation, propaganda, and parades, maybe it wasn’t a bad alternative. And much less messy."
He goes on to say that he "was interested in how a bit of running, jumping and throwing could incite such Nationalistic passion and spirit in people who couldn’t quite manage to vote for a republic or always remember the words to the Australian national anthem.
NORTHERN IRELAND
Matthew has also spent a lot of time documenting the Protestant community in Northern Ireland, and again you get a sense of his wry humorist style.
He is interested in how people mark themselves and their environment to show allegiance.
In the Protestant area of Northern Ireland, they go to such lengths to align themselves with England.
England however is a country that seems to be completely uninterested in their situation or their culture.This series was undertaken as part of a larger project called "Pink Bits". The title refers to the government issued maps found in commonwealth schools. These world maps showed the commonwealth countries marked with the colour pink.
The project will focus more on the cultural legacy of the British Empire than the political.
MICHAEL CORRIDORE
These photographs are by Michael Corridore and are of a location in California USA known as the Salton Sea.
This environmental disaster was created when the Californian government attempted to turn the region into another Las Vegas.
They had created a man made lake without first checking the salinity of the water, prior to making plans to develop and populate the area.After a period of time the water drew the salt from the earth, and killed everything including the dreams of the Americans who had invested in the region.
It is now part modern ghost town, and part fishing and bird sanctuary, as they have managed after many years to clean up some areas and bring at least the wildlife back. Although not the people.
Michael says that "for quite a few years now he have undertaken various journey's through North and South America.He is attempting to document and explore the ironic beauty of the desolation and destruction, embedded in the landscape by our often realised dreams.
Essentially, the pictures are about a state of mind, rather than of a place.
HARVEY BENGE
Harvey Benge is a New Zealand photographer, who lives and works in both Auckland New Zealand and in Paris.
These photographs are a selection of prints from his seven published books, with a few images from his next book titled Banal, which will be published later this year.
Harvey, like many Australian and New Zealanders spends a lot of time travelling the world.
These images are of his observations of his hometown Auckland, plus various cities like Paris, Tokyo, Barcelona and Singapore.
In his work, Harvey is looking for the similarity rather than the differences he sees in these locations.He says, "My work is an observation of urban social environments and the systems of value that exist within and between them.
I question the significance and substance of the outwardly bizarre constructs that form the urban landscape. The work explores the potential for value systems to be universal - in as much as if it is happening here, it is also happening there."Harvey’s work explores the notion of parallel yet different, in the way that social signifiers are accorded different values, and different weights by different people in different situations; this against that, that over the other.
The work attempts to present the language of urban social landscapes in a democratic fashion.This leaves the viewer to reassess their own value system, against what they find familiar in the work.
TOM MCGHEE
Looking at urban landscapes for a different purpose is Tom McGhee, who lives in inner city Sydney, and created this series called 24/7, in response to the disruption caused to the city during the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
The changes made to the city for aesthetic and commercial purposes, affected many people and not least the population of homeless who live on the streets of Sydney. As part of an inner city clean up campaign, they moved this seemingly faceless population out to the outskirts of Sydney, in a bid to beautify the city for the international visitors.
This series has been created through Tom's work with the charity organization St Vincent de Paul, who care for the homeless on Sydney's streets. Tom documents various locations examining the places, other than the faces of the homeless. Tom captured scenes that give us the feelings of abandonment, hopelessness and loss that the homeless face 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
By the following year, most of the homeless people had returned to find new shelter, or returned to their original landmarks and locations that are their homes.
BEULAH VAN RENSBURG
The photographer Beulah Van Rensburg creates her own scenes, commenting on the themes of Australian suburban life, and the symbolic links between domesticity and the beauty of both functional and inane objects.
The symbolic nature of the domestic object is used to develop a visual language within the work, however Beulah’s images are also about exemplifying the beauty of the object.
Her observations regarding the fact that we are surrounded by objects 24 hours a day, are that we interact with them whether they are functional or pointless.
Her images are created to develop a visual language that celebrates the object, and tries to over come barriers in spoken language, in order to communicate globally through symbolism.
This work considers the act of perception and prior-perception. Beulah says, "As individuals, we each approach things or objects in a unique way, and we each hold preconceived ideas about the everyday things which surround us.
These differences are due to our upbringing, environment, culture, religion, and history. All the things that have affected us in the past, and change the way we interact even with everyday objects. Therefore language, as a medium for communication has many restrictions including how to communicate orally, or in writing with someone who speaks a different language.
The expression "out of sight, out of mind", when translated by a computer into Russian, and then back into English, becomes "invisible maniac", demonstrating the frustration and restrictions which are unwittingly encountered in an attempt to communicate using a language based on words. My inspiration often comes, paradoxically, from the written expressions of how difficult it is using words to communicate, especially through intensely emotional circumstances - how words often fail, and leave one feeling isolated.
In my pictures I instead use everyday objects in an easily recognizable visual form, because often they capture the feelings and ideas more precisely, and more universally, than words.
DEBORAH MOONEY
Deborah Mooney’s photographic installation, is of her 95 year old Grandmother. These nude portraits were taken in Deborah’s own bedroom under natural light, 2 years prior to her Grandmother’s death.
This series is titled ‘Passage’ and is shown as an installation of 24 photographs. Sitting atop the installation are two large protruding wings rising up over six 24 x 24 inch nude portraits.
The grandmother poses seated with no more than simple feathers as props. The 16 supporting images are leaves, feathers, a bird’s skull and a butterfly.
Deborah created the work as an altarpiece paying homage to her Grandmother. Deborah writes, "It bears witness to the passage of time. The organic processes, mortality of the body, and the transcendence of the soul. There is an element of ritual in the placement of the smaller fetish-like images surrounding her. The bird’s feathers and wings are symbolic of the release of the spirit from bondage to the earth. The butterfly is a symbol of the soul and of attraction to light. Blue in the center piece represents spirituality.
"In this work Deborah treats her Grandmother as a subject of adoration, love and respect. We are also shown that she wears her wedding ring, in order to realize that she has had a long and fulfilling life. A capacity reinforced by her willingness to reveal much of herself, at the close of her life.
The repeated circular scratching on the negatives are to signify cyclical life, and to also cocoon the grandmother, acting as both a protective tomb, and a frame that transports the woman back to the warmth of the womb.
BARNABY SWEET
Barnaby Sweet original from Auckland, New Zealand and lives in London. He is also photographing close family members and friends, however his portraits are much more removed, cold and impersonal.
Although his subjects often have glassy faces, they seem relaxed in their posture, and have vivid surroundings. These images deliberately query your perceptions of whether the sittings are authentic moments of truth and spontaneity, or heavily crafted and staged classical portraits.
Barnaby instructs these very impersonal personalities, in order for his viewer to see the meeting point, between the universal traits of humanity, and the uniqueness of our individual selves.
In looking at the routine of a person’s life, these works portray the small amount of stress that is shown when minute changes from the routine occur. For Barnaby, he sees that it is the small amount of stress that is far more interesting to the viewer, as opposed to showing the large amounts of stress seen when using shock tactics. He believes that this tells a far more balanced story.
ANDREW DUNBAR
And lastly I have work by Australian photographer Andrew Dunbar. Again Andrew is not looking for the shock tactics of his particular subject matter, which is the art of body piercing. The photographs are intended to present body piercing in the context of fashion, and to therefore reflect social trends. Fashionable styles of body adornment are simply a product of their time. Piercing can be adornment or mutilation, however these images are to embrace piercing as a creative form of self-expression, and are to seduce rather than to shock.
In this work Andrew wishes to take piercing away from its connection with subcultures, freaks and fetishes. This intention sees the images constructed with a pure kind of sensuality. It is the sheer uninhibited curiosity, without the sensationalised voyeurism. These images are more concerned with the actual body piercings, rather than an expression of an act of rebellion. Andrew says that the images are to capture what body piercing feels like rather than just what it looks like.
CHIAROSCURO
These next three images are from Andrew Dunbar’s series, Chiaroscuro. This work draws on cinematic theory and, in particular, German Expressionist cinema of the 1920's. Chiaroscuro is the orchestration of dark and light, as signifiers. In this series, the dichotomy of light and dark elements are overstated and essential to both the literal and symbolic meanings attributed to each image.
Varied lighting is used to dramatise the chiaroscuro effect, and the mood is symbolically black in order to compliment the social commentary-like messages. Objects like a gun, handcuffs and a crucifix, are in sharp focus and are hurled towards the viewer, whilst the presenters' features are blurred and distorted.
The message is about the object. The people presenting these objects are more archetypal than individual. The aim is to have the presenter, as being relatively objective, so as the viewer can read the message in whatever way is relevant and appropriate to them
DUNBAR CHIAPPIN
In this work Andrew Dunbar collaborated with an Australian painter, Anthony Chiappin.
This series is titled New Body of Art, and is a collection of thirty photographs which feature painted bodies. Andrew and Anthony apply color across naked flesh, to reflect a society that conceals the 'natural' and fetishises the body by adding rather than subtracting.
The use of color allows the sense of the unreal - the images are so overstated that the effect is overwhelming. By using a nude body the distinction between reality and fantasy becomes blurred through an enhanced hyper-reality.
The pieces appear to be quintessentially postmodern, in their expression of the cross-cultural assembling of iconic influences, such as this portrait of Elvis Presley, titled Viva Las Vegas.
This work is to also challenge preconceived ideas of the crossing of art mediums and is to embrace the culminating effect of painting, photography and sculpture.
The Sunflower. That is the end of the presentation.
Thank you for attending and please feel free to look through some of the photographer’s books that are on the table.
